Closing Access to Washington Vital Records

Currently, Washington is an open records state.
Change has been proposed by the Dept. of Health to restrict access
to Vital Records in our state. DOH is proposing changes based on a
“best practices” in vital records control and recommendations
from the Federal Government, citing privacy concerns and identity
theft. These changes will affect all genealogists!

Placing restrictions on who certified copies of
Vital Records (birth, death, marriage, and divorce) may be released
to:

Birth Certificates will only be released to
the “subject of the record” (yourself), the subject’s spouse
or domestic partner, child, parent, step-parent, sibling,
grandparent, legal guardian, legal representative or authorized
representative before the 100 year embargo.

Death Certificates will be released to the
decedent’s spouse or domestic partner, child, parent, step-parent,
sibling, grandparent, grandchild, legal guardian immediately prior
to death, legal representative, authorized representative or next of
kin as specified in RCW 11.28.120 before the 50 year embargo.

Certificate of Fetal Death will be released to
a parent, a parent’s legal representative, an authorized
representative, sibling or a grandparent before the 100 year
embargo.

New Provisions:

The State may issue an informational copy to a
vital record to anyone. Informational copies must contain only the
information “allowed by rule”.

Informational death copies will not include
information related to the cause of death and manner of death.

“Authorized representative” will include
genealogists. This will require a notarized letter of permission
from next of kin and personal identification.

Applicants will be required to provide
identification and proof of relationship to obtain certified copies
of vital records.

WSGS has been working with the Records
Preservation and Access Committee of the Federation of Genealogical
Societies, the National Genealogical Society and the International
Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies on this issue.

WSGS has taken the position that:

Vital Records are the backbone of our
profession and hobby. Access to these records is essential to our
work and embargo periods to records are unnecessarily restrictive.

We support keeping all Vital Records open.
Access to vital records has not been demonstrated to increase the
risk of identity theft. We believe that keeping birth, marriage,
divorce and death records open does more to prevent identity theft.

Keeping the cause of death on Informational
Death Records is essential to genetic and forensic genealogists.

We support proposed changes to cover the cost
for providing access to Vital Records.

Redaction of Social Security numbers on an
Informational Copies of Vital Records is supported.

We are asking all of you to please contact your
local Senator, the members of the Senate Law and Justice Committee
and the sponsors of the bill; Sen. Jamie Pederson, Sen. Ann Rivers,
Sen. Claire Wilson, Sen. Maureen Walsh, Sen. Emily Randall, Sen.
Annette Cleveland and Sen. Marko Liias. This bill is scheduled for a
hearing before the Senate Law and Justice Committee on Thursday, Jan.
31, 2019 at 10am. Please submit your comments before Thursday!

Identity theft is not eliminated through records closure. By comparing the amount of years birth and death records are closed in each state against data from the Federal Trade Commission, Reclaim the Records produced a graph of ID theft vs. records closure. The results were that the line was flat. ID theft had nothing to do with whether or not records were closed or open.

I hope they have a change of heart. This would hurt more than help the people. Families and genealogists need access to these vital records to learn about their ancestors. Identity theft will occur with or without these records. Keeping them Open makes them easily traced if there were any people trying to do such a deed and probably protects them more by remaking open for all to see. My father died when I was only eighteen years old. His parents died when he was in his early teens. These records connect families back together. We can learn the details from the records, then study the history of the area and come to an understanding of how they lived and what was happening in the world at that time. This information is a priceless treasure for the families left behind. Please don’t take that away.

I do not live in Washington so unfortunately, I cannot help by contacting a representative, however, if someone can get a message to one or more of them, other states have started to protect certified vital records by issuing a informational index for births, including first, middle initial, and last name of the child with date and place of birth along with the name of the parents, WITHOUT including the certificate number or by substituting an Informational index number that corresponds to in a state security level database with the actual birth certificate number. Although the index record cannot be used for proof of identity, it can be used as a reference source for genealogists. Might be worth the time to suggest it as a compromise to the complete closure of records.

A big part is they want to redact the cause of death for people trying to see if “it’s heredity.” For us whose Grandma died at 27 and you NEVER knew anything about her family because Grandpa remarried and moved to WA from SD, the trail stops.
There’s proof that identity theft has NOT come from birth, death, marriage & divorce certificates. I’m sure they’d love to blame us, sloppy credit card mgmt.

I do not live in Washington state, but I was born and raised there. My family settled there in the late 1800’s and the majority of my family history is there. My family did not keep records and I rely heavily on accessing this information in order to publish our family history. I understand wanting to remove social security numbers, but please leave the other records available to us as they are. Indexes do not always give you the complete picture and are not a good primary source.